Quotes About Resilience

He does not say: "There dare not be an evil rumor," but rather: "There will be evil rumors. The world will revile him and hold him to be a wicked scoundrel, a heretic, and a deceiver.

We have come to understand why it is so necessary to repeat the admonition of this verse. When Satan cannot suppress the preaching of the Gospel by force he tries to accomplish his purpose by striking the ministers of the Gospel with poverty.

The world is a head of thistles; whichever way you turn it, it stretches the thorns about itself.

And the human mind endures misfortunes of any kind more easily than prosperity and abundance, as the German proverb puts it: "Strong legs are needed to be able to endure good days.

Hence one should follow the advice of the hermit to whom a youth complained that he rather often experienced imaginations concerned with lusts and other sins and to whom the old man replied: "You cannot prevent the birds from flying over your head. But let them only fly and do not let them build nests in the hair of your head. Let them be thoughts and remain such; but do not let them become conclusions."32

He would like best of all to persecute us with fire and sword, but this method has availed him little because through the blood of martyrs the church has been watered.

That is, as he says here, he should bend off neither to the right hand nor to the left, but move forward straight and firmly in prosperity and adversity, in strength and weakness, in glory and shame, clinging faithfully and bravely to the Word of God alone.

They turn the heart away much more strongly than adversity and want do, as he says in his song (Deut. 32:15): "Having become swollen, fat, and thick, he rebelled"; and (Prov. 1:32): "The prosperity of the foolish destroys them"; as is said also in the German proverb: "You need strong legs to hold up under good days." For man endures evil more easily than good, as the poet says: "Luxury has invaded as a deadlier foe."2

We should give heed to what has been said by the heathen poet: "Do not yield to evils but proceed more boldly against them."15

If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.

You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression. . . . There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November. There comes a time.

We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile. I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime.

[W]hen you first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are), and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro... when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" - then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you to go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream.

[W]e are the heirs of a past of rope, fire, and murder. I for one am not ashamed of this past. My shame is for those who became so inhuman that they could inflict this torture upon us.

The majority of the Negroes who took part in the year-long boycott of Montgomery's buses were poor and untutored; but they understood the essence of the Montgomery movement; one elderly woman summed it up for the rest. When asked after several weeks of walking whether she was tired, she answered: "My feet is tired, but my soul is at rest."

The Christian faith makes it possible for us nobly to accept that which cannot be changed, and to meet disappointments and sorrow with an inner poise, and to absorb the most intense pain without abandoning our sense of hope.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.

Our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.

Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear.

If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.